Saturday, April 12, 2014

How to attract and win over the consumer in the highly competitive Internet marketplace?

What would the best marketer of the world do?

What would Sun Tzu do?

What would Alexander the Great do?

Well, the answer is not so simple, since onlineconsumerbehaviorhasbecomeanemergingresearcharea as well as a key factor for many companies. Digital ecosystems are evolving so rapidly and it seems that even the greatest strategists might face difficulties in consumer behavior modeling and optimizing consumer interactivity with the brand.

But how do we, marketers, approach the construct "online consumer behavior" in the first place? AssuggestedbyDouglasetal.(1994),strong theoreticalandconceptualframeworkscanbedevelopedthroughanintegrationof
constructsfromdifferentdisciplines. It is not coincidental that academic literature on online consumer modeling may be found in Journals like the ones of Electronic Commerce, Marketing Management, Decision Support Systems, Economic Psychology, Interactive Marketing, Management Information Systems and many more. TheoryofReasonedAction(TRA)anditsfamily theoriesincludingtheTechnologyAcceptanceModel(TAM)andtheTheoryofPlanned
Behavior(TPB)aredominanttheoriesinprocess of explaining online consumer actions.Expectation-ConfirmationTheory (ECT)andInnovationDiffusionTheory(IDT)havealsobeenrepeatedlytestedinthe
studyofonlineconsumerbehavior.

However, Cheung et al. (2003) tried to approach it by integrating thethreekey conceptsofintention,adoption,andcontinuance, based on Fishbein’sattitudinaltheoreticalmodel (Fishbein1967)andtheexpectation-confirmationmodel(Oliver1980). Their ModelofIntention, Adoption,andContinuance(MIAC) seems an interesting framework for developing the framework of their theory.

MIAC

Thus, the modeling framework proposed, as an extension to HoffmanandNovak(1996), it the following:

The five domains of consumer, product, medium, intermediary characteristics as well as enviromental influences were integrated in MIAC (intention, adoption, repurchase) in order to provide a cohesive view on online consumer behavior.

It seems that a wise marketer may segment the market, target the correct target segment with the correct product, both core and augmented, and position it with the correct marketing mix, in order to win competition. However, medium characteristics should not be ignored; Trustandperceivedriskhave beenwidelyinvestigatedinthestudyofconsumeronlinepurchaseintention.Somerecent studies(LeeandTurban2001)focusedprimarilyonthetrust
formationprocessinthecontextofInternetshopping. Furthermore, environmental influences including norms, cultures and cultural contextual sets should also not be underestimated; A consumer behavior pattern, e.g. adoption and success of a fragrance e-shop in Mexico could be totally different in Greece or India.Electroniccommerceisrapidlychangingthewaypeopledobusinessalloverthe globe. IntheB2Csegment,Internet saleshavebeenincreasing
dramaticallyoverthelastfewyears.Customers,notonlythosefromwell-developed countriesbutalsothosefromdevelopingcountries,aregettingusedtothenewshopping channel.Understandingthefactorsthataffectintention,adoptionandrepurchaseare important both forresearchersandpractitioners. MIAC is a nice model to begin with.

Classicalconsumerbehavioraltheoriesprovideresearcherswithagoodstartingpoint inunderstandingonlineconsumerbehavior.However,weshouldtaketheITcomponent intoseriousconsiderationwhendoingresearchinonlineconsumerbehavior.Insteadof blindlyborrowingtheoriesandmodelsfromotherdisciplines,researchers and practitioners should testtheirownbehavioralmodelsdeclaringwhatisuniqueandspecifictothecontext
ofconsumer-basedelectroniccommerce. This may be the only way that marketing can survive in the Digital Age.